


Quiet as a candle (bright as the morning sun)

by justapigeon



Category: Avatar: The Last Airbender
Genre: Abuse, Angst and Hurt/Comfort, Angst with a Happy Ending, Beekeeper Piandao, Beekeeper Zuko, Canonical Child Abuse, Gen, Implied/Referenced Child Abuse, M/M, Ozai (Avatar) is an Asshole, Pianjeong being old saps, Zuko (Avatar) Gets a Hug, Zuko (Avatar) Needs a Hug, Zuko is an Awkward Turtleduck
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-11-03
Updated: 2020-11-12
Packaged: 2021-03-09 00:28:27
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 2
Words: 3,082
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27365812
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/justapigeon/pseuds/justapigeon
Summary: You don't choose adoption, adoption chooses you. For Piandao and Jeong Jeong (happily married old men who just want to enjoy their quiet life being saps and keeping bees) it manifests through a phone call fron the local café and a scarf-clad child.
Relationships: Iroh & Jeong Jeong & Piandao (Avatar), Jeong Jeong & Zuko (Avatar), Jeong Jeong/Piandao (Avatar), Piandao & Zuko (Avatar)
Comments: 33
Kudos: 160





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> I've been playing with the idea of Beekeper Zuko for a while now, and this is his origin story. It's a wip with a huge focus on in progress, so the title and the chapers might undergo some changes if i have better ideas.  
> I just needed to start posting it to force myself to actually committ to this project  
> Now with art on my Tumblr, here is lil Zuko: https://just-apigeon.tumblr.com/post/633860543812452353/lil-zuko-when-piandao-and-jeong-jeong-find-him

Piandao is quietly munching on his very fluffy, very soft rolled eggs. Half of his mind still asleep, lost in dizzy softness and the familiar weight of Jeong Jeong’s arm around his waist as they sleep under the kotatsu (where they relocate from the end of fall up until around March every year).  


The other half is split between thinking about doing an early check on the hives and contemplating the sight of his husband sipping coffee.  


His old red sweater (which Piandao is sure used to be his at some point), his grey hair streaked with white tied back, soft cool light of an early spring with snow still on the ground making him look ethereal and yet so very earthly.  


Piandao feels his heart swell with unapologetically saccharine love.  


Jeong Jeong notices him staring, lets it be known with an arched eyebrow and an amused smirk. Piandao turns his head away, huffing and rolling his eyes (it’s utterly useless, given the smile stretching his lips).  


There is a fox, in front of their window. It is not uncommon, in the quiet rural area of Hokkaido where the two of them have decided to live, Piandao just smiles a little wider.  


"Look, our little friend has come to greet us” His voice is soft as early spring sunlight, as if the world could crack and crash, were it a little higher.  


Jeong Jeong simply hums, going to refill his cup of coffee.  


The telephone rings, a thrill sound that breaks the quiet.  


Jeong Jeong picks it up. “Miss Ito, problems with swarms again?”  


Piandao scrunches his nose the slightest bit (it’s a bit too early in spring to get these kinds of phone calls), but starts cataloguing what he needs in his head. It’s not the first time somebody calls them about bees making their home in the attic or in the tree right next to their front door. He had hoped for some lazing around, but it seems that it must be postponed.  


Jeong Jeong furrows his eyebrows, the free hand fidgeting with the pull tab of his sweater's zip. “Not that kind of unexpected guest?”  


Piandao stops. Miss Ito (the bubbly young owner of a café in front of the train station, the only café in their town) talks and talks on the other end of line in a somewhat rambling and agitated fashion, judging by the vague mumbling he can hear and by the expressions going over his husband's face.  


Annoyance turns confusion, then sorrowful anger.  


Piandao's amusement turns dread.  


"He's still there, isn't he? Good. We'll... we're coming to get him, sure. Keep him warm and try to get some food in him."  


His hands shake a little when he puts the telephone down.  


"Jeong Jeong-? What happened?," Piandao asks, his voice measured though trembling. The world already cracked and crashed, he just doesn't know to what extent, "Is it Iroh-? Did he... did he fall into it again-?"  


Jeong Jeong shakes his head slowly, takes a breath, looks up at him. "I'm afraid it's about Zuko."  


(The fox outside their window runs away.)  


Piandao's hands grip the steering wheel a little too tightly as they drive to town. Beside him, Jeong Jeong clutches his fists and breaths deep and slow.  


They both remember Zuko vaguely, it's been years (just three years, he corrects himself, though time has seemed stretched by sorrow, just three years.) Laughter and the tantrums of a spoiled brat and wooden training swords and somber eyes as he waited for the train to go home.  


Piandao has a very bad, horrible feeling about this. (Please let the kid be ok, let it be some outburst of teenage rebellion, please let the kid be ok.)  


The feeling of dread only increases tenfold upon parking the car.  


He knows his hands are trembling as he knocks on the cafe's door, and it's not because it's 3° out there. (Piandao forces himself not to think about how Jeong Jeong's hands are shaking, buried in his pockets, not now, not now.)  


The ‘closed’ sign sways as Miss Ito opens the door. She greets them with a hastened bow and a forced smile. There is pained worry in her eyes and that is not a good sign.  


(Please let the kid be ok.)  


“Thank you. for coming so quickly,” she whispers as she leads them behind the counter and into the backroom. "He's... I'm sorry, I wasn't able to get him to eat anything, he refuses to take off his scarf."  


Piandao should answer. He knows he should, Jeong Jeong sure as hell isn't going to so he has to say something. Anything.  


But there is a child, in the backroom of the café, sitting on an overturned crate, and that's the only thing Piandao's mind can focus on.  


The child, sitting on an overturned crate in the backroom of a café.  


He's tiny and shivering, his jacket far from warm enough, and his head is wrapped in an old, tattered scarf. The once-mustard cotton covers most of his face, except for his right eye and the right side of his nose. There is a stain of _something_ around where the left eye should be.  


It takes him a moment to realize that it is wet with blood and some yellowish liquid (he doesn’t want to realize it).  


There is a great screaming in Piandao's head, but he tries to silence it. Not now, not now.  


(The kid is anything but ok).  


Behind him, Jeong Jeong mindlessly brings a hand up to trace the path of scarred flesh left on his cheek by broken china.  


"Zuko, darling... this is Mr. Piandao," begins Miss Ito, her voice gentle and calm in a way that he envies quite a lot right now, "You asked me to call him, do you remember?"  


Zuko (is that child truly him? That scared kid, curled around himself? A wild brown eye that looks for an escape route with a panic that seems to be a natural state, more scared fox than child?) eyes them in silence. Assesses them.  


Piandao stops a few meters from him, kneels down. Thinks of the wild foxes in his backyard and how they would bolt if he got too close. He places his hands in his lap and tries to smile in a somewhat reassuring way.  


"Hi Zuko, dear. You asked for me, didn't you?"  


The child jerkily nods, then speaks. His voice is rough, scratching in a way that is so wrong. Whether it is from disuse or a cold or some other wound Piandao does not know and he's not sure he wants to find out right now.  


"I'm sorry I bothered you- but I don't know where to go-,” he halts, seems to weight whether to go on or stop, brings his knees to his chest and chooses the first option, “-and you were so kind the last time I was here so I thought that maybe- maybe I would be safe here-.”  


Piandao shifts a little, trying to find the right words to answer. But Zuko curls up tighter around himself. Almost (and Piandao' stomach flips at the thought) bracing himself to be hit. For him to say and prove that Zuko is not safe there.  


"Of course, dear," he forces his voice not to shake, to be calm and gentle like Miss Ito's. "Of course you are safe here. With me, with us. How about... how about we go home and-"  


At the mention of home the kid tenses up again. Piandao is terrified he'll bolt like a wild fox to which he's gotten too close. Disappear into the white snow with his too light jacket.  


"You need to warm up," he blurts out. "I could make some tea... and you need food, dear."  


Zuko eyes him warily up until he mentions tea, then seems to become boneless, a puddle of terrified anger and a too big coat and desperate sadness.  


Piandao holds out a hand, keeps it a good meter away from the kid. He waits, steady and patient.  


It takes a while (he has no idea how long it actually takes, times goes too fast and unbearably slow in the backroom of that café) but then the boy gets up and takes his hand.  


They walk quietly out of the shop and into the car, a paper bag full of wheel cakes held tightly in dirty tiny hands (on the house, Miss Ito had said and smiled as if nothing had just happened and looked at them in a way that was a promise, of sorts.)  


Piandao's grip on the wheel is white-knuckled as they drive home.  


(The kid is going to be ok.)  



	2. Chapter 2

Zuko sits quietly on the back seat of an old car, he doesn’t know what kind of car it is, barely even noticed the colour. He sits quietly there, trying to figure out what is to come.

(He shouldn’t even bother trying, growls a voice in the back of his mind that sounds like his own voice and Father’s voice too, he’s not good at that just like he’s not good at anything.) 

There is a brown paper bag in his hands and he clutches it hard. He knows there is food inside and it takes every bit of his will to not rip it open, but he won't mess things up straight away. 

He hopes he has time to rest a little, before everything goes to shit (it always does). 

Zuko is so very tired. 

He can't allow himself to be. Can't fall asleep on the back seat of that old car, no matter how his one good eyelid shakes from the effort to remain open, can't let his guard down. 

He found Piandao. Piandao promised he was safe there. That doesn’t mean it’s true. People lie all the time, and he’s never been good at noticing when they do.  
(He had even believed Father could have loved him.) 

What if they send him back home? 

Let them try to send him back home, he thinks with terrified anger, he’ll run the moment they as much as mention calling Father. 

(He’s pretty sure he won’t make it out alive a second time.) 

Was going to Piandao a good idea? Azula’s right, he never thinks things through. But he had to find someone. 

He’d figured out that much on the third day of wandering through the streets of Tokyo with his mouth feeling full of sawdust and the right side of face in so much pain he thought it would drive him crazy. He was so hungry he didn’t even feel it. 

He knew he had to find someone, he just didn’t know who. 

Mum was gone. 

So was Grandma on Mum’ side, and he barely knew where she had lived, anyway. Barely knew what she had looked like.  
(Umeboshi sent via post service and an old picture of a smiling woman hidden in Mom’s drawer). 

Mai’s parents would hand him off to the Social Services if he was lucky, send him back home if he wasn’t. 

And Uncle-  
He had become cold and distant in his grief, eyes clouded with ashes and fragments of bones. Zuko wasn’t sure Uncle would help him. It wasn’t like Zuko was his son. 

(He had never felt more alone than that night, sitting huddled up in a back alley, rummaging through his mind in search of the name of somebody who might help him.) 

Piandao’s name came to him when he woke up, having passed out sometime in the early morning. He had dreamt of long summer days and buzzing bees and the way the calluses hurt after training with wooden swords. (It was most safe he’d felt in two years.) 

It was afternoon already. Zuko counted what little money he had, loose change in his pockets. Got himself a curry nikuman and a water bottle at a convenience store. Snuck into the train to Shin-Hakodate-Hokuto Station. 

He bought a one-way ticket to a small town in the countryside that cost more than what he had. The man who handed him the ticket didn’t seem to notice it. 

(He had clutched his last coin so hard there were red lines in the shape of cherry blossoms on his palm.) 

And now he’s there, sitting on the back seat of Piandao’s car. Holding a brown paper bag full of sweets as tight as he can, hoping his shaking hands won’t put him in trouble already. 

Zuko hadn't thought it would be so cold in Hokkaido, ~~b̶a̶c̶k̶ ̶a̶t̶ ̶h̶o̶m̶e̶~~ back in Tokyo early spring meant light showers and putting away the winter coats. He looks out the window and sees fields covered in watery snow flanking the street, he can’t seem to shop shivering. 

(Azula would have thought about this, would have gotten a warmer coat somehow.) 

He looks away from the muddy white and glances at the back of Piandao’s head as he drives. That’s when he notices he’s being watched. 

Jeong Jeong is looking at him with an expression that means… something, but something Zuko doesn’t quite get.  
There is a hint of sadness in the curl of his lips, though it could be displeasure as well. (He’s never been good at grasping the difference, not like Azula is. But it can’t be sadness, he reasons, so it must be the other one.) Grey and white brows are furrowed in a way that he recognizes as anger. 

His heartbeat skyrockets. 

Shit, he knew he’d mess things up. Were his teeth chattering? He was pretty sure he was being quiet. Maybe Jeong Jeong just doesn’t like him. Maybe he actually bothered them on a day they had something to do. Just his luck. He shouldn’t have called them. He knew things would go to shit. He just hoped to have more time. 

Jeong Jeong’s voice is muffled by the rush of blood in his ears.  
“Kid. Hand me the bag.” 

Zuko obeys mechanically. Some part of him is relieved by the fact he doesn’t risk dropping the food and making a mess anymore. (It wouldn’t do to worsen his situation, really.) The rest of him tenses up and waits for them to stop the car and tell him to get off. 

He definitely does not expect Jeong Jeong to shrug off his coat and hand it to him with a gruff but somehow kind, “Put this on, kid, you’re not dressed for this cold.” 

“I’m sorry,” Zuko says as he wraps the black parka around his shoulders, because he doesn’t really know what else to say. 

The only answer is a low hum and the brown paper bag being placed back beside him. 

“Eat something, those are for you.” 

Zuko nods, confusion sticky in his mouth. He trembles even under the winter coat, but pulls at the fabric of the stolen scarf enough for his mouth to be free and starts munching on a wheel cake.  
Then a second. Then a third. (They’re tiny, ok? And he’s really hungry!) 

When the car pulls up in front of a small house the brown paper bag is empty and Zuko still hasn’t registered if the cakes had red bean paste filling or chocolate cream. 

Piandao is the first to get out, snow squeaking under his soles. Jeong Jeong turns towards him and just… looks. Zuko is ready to hand him the coat back, but he doesn’t ask for it. 

The door on his left opens. Zuko breathes in deep. 

(It’s a bad idea, the air is cold and it burns his lungs). 

Jeong Jeong keeps staring, gives him a little nod that might be meant to be reassuring, but it can’t be. Why are they so kind? It makes no sense! 

He gets out of the car.  
It’s cold. 

(Wow, Zuko, what an insightful comment, snarls the Azula that resides somewhere in the nape of his neck, in that spot where his hair ends and that hurts sometimes.) 

His hands hold the black parka tighter around his shoulders, the muddy ground is squishy and cold under his spring shoes as he follows the two of them to the house. 

They leave their shoes by the door, and Zuko gladly accepts the guest slippers that are too big for him and almost slip from his feet at every step. 

He leaves them outside the living room with equal, if not more, gladness. (His socks are muddy and holey and definitely not proper, but Piandao and Jeong Jeong don’t seem to care for now). 

“I’ll go put on the kettle”, the white-haired man says, “We did promise you a cup of tea.” 

“Do you want something to eat, dear?”, asks the other, smiling down at him in that kind way that has his head hurt. 

(Where is the lie? There ought to be a lie somewhere.) 

Zuko just nods, suddenly too tired for words. Piandao disappears in the kitchen and he’s left alone. 

He shifts from sitting in seiza to crossing his legs and hunching his shoulders, eyes wandering through the living room. It’s clean and orderly and at the same time messy, with piles of dog-eared books on the floor and potted plants in neat little rows on a shelf. 

He likes it. It’s a weird mix that feels much realer than whatever impersonal opulence his own house had going on. 

“I hope you uh... like coffee milk flavour?”, Piandao mumbles as he hands him a box of banana cakes. 

As if Zuko even cares about what food tastes like. He nods and quickly stuffs one of the banana-shaped sweets in his mouth. He doesn’t even spare a glance for the sea otter printed on it. 

The other man chuckles somewhat sadly and sits down in front of him. The silence only lasts two sponge cakes. 

“You know, Zuko, you should… you could take that scarf off. We could treat whatever you have under there, it’s probably better…” 

He stops, gulps down the second sweet, and brings a hand to hesitantly pull at the mustard-coloured cotton. 

It’s soiled and uncomfortably wet where the scar is. Rough against his skin (what’s left of it).  
But it’s better than the looks people give him when they see his face, that mix of pity and horror and disgust. 

He doesn’t want Piandao and Jeong Jeong to look at him like that. To see repulsion flood their faces. 

Zuko closes his eyes and gives a hard tug. 

Piandao gasps.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> As you can see, I kinda gave up on the chapter titles. Oof.  
> Life definitely sucks rn, but this fic has been playing a huge role in keeping afloat and I am thankful to everyone who left a kudo or a kind comment on the first chapter. I love you all so much.  
>   
> When this AU was first discussed, in the Zukka Nation discord, somebody (i think it was Shen), proposed it should be set in Hokkaido. I tried my best researching what life in the rural areas of Hokkaido is like, and tried to add the information I gathered. The last thing I want is to write it like and European conutry countryside town. I gathered information from guides and blogs, but I might have gotten something wrong. If I did, or anything I wrote is offensive to anyone, I will remove it or change it.  
> Some notes:  
> A nikuman is a steamed bun with meat filling that is usually bought at convenience stores.  
> The ¥ 100 coin has cherry blossoms on the front. Internet says the basic train ticket costs arounf 200 ¥ but it might be wrong. However, since ¥ 100 is basically $ 1 Japan either has super cheap train tickets or it wasn't enough for Zuko to buy one.  
> I personally think Zuko deserves some swear words. As a treat.  
> The climate in Hokkaido is generally cooler than in the rest of Japan. Taking March, the month this fic starts in, in Tokyo the average is 14°/5°, while in Sapporo it's 4°/-4°.  
> Headaches with pain located in the back of the head/neck are usually caused by stress.  
> I guess that eberybody knows Japanese people take their shoes off before entering their house? I had no idea there apparently are rooms you should not go in with slippers either, which are rooms with tatami flooring. From what I've read, you are supposed to sit in seiza or cross legged while on tatami flooring. This flooring is usually found in bedrooms and sleeping rooms.  
> A family frind brought us banana cakes when he went to Japan, and those little sweets!!! So cute!!! I couldn't not include them. It's a banana-shaped sponge cake with cream filling, I think from Tokyo. On the Tokyo Banana website I found the super cute Tokyo Banana Racco, which are coffee milk flavoured (they were for Jeong Jeong shhh) and have a little sea otter holding a fish printed on.  
>   
> More info, this time a disclaimer:  
> When I showed my beta the general planning of this fic, they pointed out a pretty major point seems similar to Haicrescendo's Pride Is Not The Word (my friend likes Hai's work and often read its... with my phone or pc since they are a a horible freeloader. Jk I luv u). I would like to say that I have not (yet) read Hai's work, so the idea was not taken from there. I do intend to read it soon (I am a weak, weak woman), so it might slightly influence some details, but the plot idea is my own creation.  
>   
> One last thing! I might start posting some art of this AU, go check out my tumblr at just-apigeon and check the tag #bees and queers  
>   
> Feed an author some love and leave a comment!

**Author's Note:**

> Zuko is definitely not ok. Jeong Jeong as well. Piandao wants to scream.  
> We're gonna see Zuko get better, meet Azula and Iroh, kick Ozai's butt. In no precise order. Soapkka is gonne appear somewhere, sometime, too.  
> Feed an author some validation and be so kind as to leave a comment?
> 
> (was edited on 11/11 because I'm a perfectionist, expect chapter two as soon as I figure out a title)


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